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User blog:Star Voyager/Venusian Challenger
This is a story I wrote awhile ago about a fictional DoD mission to Skylab. It's called "Venusian Challenger". Here's a little bit of what I have. The main character is Jack Mather. In the same universe is another character I have yet to write about: Ralston McElveen. Enjoy! Location: Ellington Field Houston, Texas Year: 1984… The blue and white T-38 screamed down runway 35L, slowly approaching 200 knots. The NASA “worm” logo on the vertical stabilizer was a red flash to the well-wishers waving goodbye on the ramp. Jack Mather, the pilot, blew back on the stick. The trainer responded and shot up over the Houston skies. One thousand feet passed quickly on his altimeter. There were three other T-38’s up with him, each with a designated pilot and a member of his crew. His GIB, or “Guy in Back”, was Mission Specialist (MS) Frank Lowell. Frank had been a veteran of Apollo, one of the last “moon men” in the astronaut office. He had also served aboard the Skylab space station in the mid-1970’s. That flight had re-boosted the complex to a higher orbit for future use by the space shuttle, which was where Jack’s mission was going. Both Frank and his Skylab re-boost mission had been critical to the objectives they were about to accomplish. STS-41E, a Department of Defense mission to evaluate the strategic defense capability of Skylab, had been shrouded in secrecy from the beginning. The US Air Force was glad the press did not care about it. Nobody at NASA, including the crew, or the DoD was allowed to discuss the top-secret features of the flight plan. The crew was selected because they all had military backgrounds, as security clearance takes too long for civilians. Jack Mather was the commander of the mission and a Major in the USAF. The pilot, or second in command, was rookie Lieutenant Commander John Welch of the Navy. The MS’s were Chief Master Sergeant Frank Lowell of the USAF, Lieutenant Commander Matt Prince from Annapolis and MIT. There was one payload specialist from the Manned Spaceflight Engineer program (MSE): Captain Peter Metcalfe of the USAF, a “missileer” from Strategic Air Command. Each had a job to do, and with tensions high between the U.S. and the “Ruskies”, there was not much room for error. So the flight of NASA T-38’s glided on the clouds over the Southern coast of the United States. About two hours after takeoff, the T-38’s landed on runway 33 at the Shuttle Landing Facility at Kennedy Space Center, located in Merritt Island, Florida. The crew was immediately rushed to the Operations and Checkout building. On the eve of the launch, after saying an emotional goodbye to their families at the astronaut beach house, there was a subdued atmosphere in the crew quarter’s back at O n’ C. John and Pete were watching TV while Matt was reviewing a rendezvous checklist over a drink. Frank was in his room talking to his wife on the phone. Jack had not done that since his last mission. His wife died soon after that in a car accident. And now more than ever, he wished he could talk to her. But he had a mission to concentrate on, so he went to look over the checklist with Matt. When they all finally turned in for the night, he struggled to get himself relaxed, but his thoughts drifted back and forth from the memories of his wife and the mission at hand. Somewhere along the line, he closed his eyes and slept. He was shaken eight hours later to the sound of a knock on the door: it was John. “Hey”, he said, “we’re getting up now. They say Challenger looks good to go!” Challenger was to be their orbiter for this mission. She was the second ship of the line after Columbia. Jack got up and dressed for the pre-liftoff briefing, then met the rest of his crew for breakfast. Over a piece of toast, they discussed contingency options during launch in case there was trouble. Jack could not help but notice that there were a significantly less amount of people with them. Probably from tighter security, he concluded. Category:Stories Category:Blog posts